Theory and Practice

by Shapiro, Ian; Decew, Judith Wagner

• ISBN13: 9780814780558
• ISBN10: 0814780555
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-10-01
• Publisher: New York Univ Pr

Summary

With 16 original essays all published here for the first time,Theory and Practicefocuses on the relationship between philosophical tradition and everyday life in the Western tradition. In this comprehensive volume, Ian Shapiro and Judith Wagner DeCew have gathered contributions from some of the most influential thinkers of our generation including Cass Sunnstein, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Martha Nussbaum, Jeremy Waldron, and Kent Greenwalt.What are the relations between philosophical theories and everyday life? This question, as old as it is profound, is the central focus ofTheory and Practice. The contributors include some of the most influential thinkers of our generation, among them Cass Sunnstein, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Martha Nessbaum, Jeremy Waldron, and Kent Greenwalt. In sixteen chapters--all published here for the first time--the authors examine major attempts to reconcile theory with practice in the Western tradition from Herodotus, Plato, and Aristotle to Kant and Heidegger.Considerable attention is devoted to the role of theory in judicial decision-making, debates between defenders of the value of pure theory and those who argue for the priority of practice, the political implications of theory, practical problems such as global warming, and the theoretical commitments of practitioners from Karl Marx to Vaclav Havel. One of the most expansive volumes in the NOMOS series to date,Theory and Practicewill be of interest to philosophers, lawyers, and social scientists from a wide range of disciplines.

Table of Contents

Preface
Contributors
Introduction	p. 1
The Decline and Repudiation of the Whole: Notes on Aristotle's Enclosure of the Pre-Socratic World	p. 19
Kant on Theory and Practice	p. 47
High Theory, Low Theory, and the Demands of Morality	p. 81
Psychological Realism and Moral Theory	p. 108
What Plato Would Allow	p. 138
"Lawyer for Humanity": Theory and Practice in Ancient Political Thought	p. 181
The Theoretical Importance of Practice	p. 216
Avoidable Necessity: Global Warming, International Fairness, and Alternative Energy	p. 239
On Legal Theory and Legal Practice	p. 267
Religious Resistance to the Kantian Sovereign	p. 288
On Regulating Practices with Theories Drawn from Them: A Case of Justice as Fairness	p. 309
Public Practical Reason: Political Practice	p. 345
"Truth" or Consequences	p. 386
The End of Morality? Theory, Practice, and the "Realistic Outlook" of Karl Marx	p. 403
Heidegger and Political Philosophy: The Theory of His Practice	p. 440
A Performer of Political Thought: Vaclav Havel on Freedom and Responsibility	p. 464
Index	p. 483
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